The most spammed country in the world? Switzerland.

Wolfgang Gruener, 9th July 2008

Chicago (IL) – You may be complaining about the number of spam emails finding their way to your email account every day, but it may come as a surprise to you that the U.S. is actually not the most targeted country by spammers: According to a report released to today, Swiss users receive 10% more of spam than the average Internet user – and 23% more than U.S. users.

If we believe the numbers released by MessageLabs, then we are on a slight upward curve of spam that is sent globally. 76.5% of all emails in June were found to be spam by the security firm, while the global average over the past six months was 74.5%. However, there is a huge difference in spam that is sent to different countries and industries.

MessageLabs said that 84.8% of emails in Switzerland were spam, surpassing the traditional leader in this category, Hong Kong (82.6%). The top 5 is rounded out by France (82.1%), Israel (80.1%) and Austria (79.6%). The share in the U.S. was 68.8%, Canada’s 77.8% and UK’s 74.3%.

Manufacturing is apparently the most targeted by spammers (82.9%), followed by education (80.4%) and retail (80.1%). The financial sector’s share was at just 71.5%.

MessageLabs also found virus distribution rebounding to one virus in 133.9 emails and the phishing was flat at 1 in 277.2 cases.